Birthday Party

by C. H. B. Kitchin

  Carlice Abbey,

  Wiltshire.

  Thursday.

  Darling Dolly,

  How exciting it must be! I quite understand that you wanted to get away from South Mersley, and I don’t disapprove at all that you’re not living with your mother and Frances, though naturally they would have liked having you there. But it would have been difficult for you to go back to them, after having had a house of your own.

  And I should love to have what you call a pied-à-terre with you in London, though it’s quite impossible just now. Frankly, I couldn’t afford it. It’s difficult to explain, but there’s less pocket-money here than there was at Elmcroft—or, for that matter, at your mother’s place. I even feel I oughtn’t to spend my own money on myself, apart from my allowance from the estate. The estate income seems to get less every year, and it gets more and more of a struggle to keep things going. And this is a house in which it’s difficult to economise. But you saw all that, when you came here.

  It’s funny how little she seemed to enjoy her visit. Perhaps she was a bit ashamed of Tom. I ought to have had them alone without other guests. But when I did ask them alone, they made some excuse for not coming. It must have been Tom. I wonder if she told him that I called him the Rough Diamond. When your friends marry, it often becomes very difficult. I can’t help being glad that she’s on her own again.

  You know Ronnie comes of age next September. What will happen then, I can’t say. If he wants me to stay on and housekeep, I suppose I shall have to do it. Of course there’s Joan—you never met her, I think. She’s a nice capable girl, but her great friend has just divorced her husband in South Africa, and when she comes back, I dare say Joan will start farming or market-gardening with her. They kept poultry together for a time, and did fairly well.

  Of course, Ronnie will marry sooner or later. His Aunt Isabel says he’s probably playing Tristan to a tobacconist’s daughter in Oxford, when any ordinary undergraduate would be content with being Don Juan. (I hope I’ve got it right. They’re characters from operas, aren’t they?) He doesn’t seem interested in any of the girls who live in these parts or in Joan’s friends—though of course they’re older than he is. But even if I stay on, pending his marriage, I think I should like to be able to get away a bit from time to time, especially if he lives at home. He would probably want the place to himself and his friends a good deal. So I shall go on thinking of your spare room with great excitement, and it is just possible that I could run up to see it for a few days in May.

  How I wish it was May now.

  Do I? Yes. I don’t mind if it does bring the “crisis” nearer. I’m getting over all that silly worry, except sometimes when I get worked up in bed. Even if things go as badly as I imagine, they can’t eat me. I shall simply say, “Well, there it is. I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean it to happen.”

  There’s a heavy April in prospect. Ronnie’s now on a reading-party, as they call it, at a rectory not very far from Oxford. He comes back for Easter, of course, and Isabel Carlice and her friend Gwen Rashdall and other friends of theirs are coming down. Then, when they go, I’ve got Maud, Gladys and Lionel coming. I wish you’d come here then and help me to entertain them, though I know you don’t care for Maud or Gladys much.

  That was Tom again, I suppose, who made that awkwardness. He thought everybody was “putting on airs.”

  And then Ronnie is entertaining some undergraduate friends till the beginning of the summer term. Then I think I shall have to ask Isabel down again. She does so adore the garden at the beginning of May. She almost measures the plants and trees to see how much they grow each day. So you see, so far from being a lady of independent means, I’m really a kind of hotel-keeper. After that, though, there should be a little peace, and I do hope you’ll come here for a few days, or let me come to you.

  I’ve been very worried lately about Stephen, who’s at loggerheads with Don Rusper. I think you know that Daddy made Don Stephen’s trustee. I’ve been trying to keep the peace between them, which isn’t easy.

  Well, lunch is nearly ready, and I must stop. Besides, it’s simply freezing in here. The central heating is on, but it’s not strong enough for this big room—the drawing-room—which is my favourite place in the house. I’m too stingy to have the fire lit here before lunch, when there’s one in the morning-room. That shows you a thing or two, doesn’t it? I picture you snuggling cosily in Occident Court, and envy you. Really, the spring is hopeless in the country. Year after year it’s the same. Lovely daffodils and lovely almond blossom and it’s too wet or too cold to go outside and enjoy them. It’s pouring now, with great sheets of rain flapping at me from over the lawn. And my nit-wit maid left the window open, and the rain has ruined one of my nice new curtains. I don’t suppose they’ll be able to repeat the stuff either. Write soon. And I’ll try to fix something up as soon as I can.

  With love,

  Your affec. Dora.

  Chapter IV: STEPHEN PAYNE

  1

  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

  HE kisses the Cross in the middle of his stole. Prettily done. I like to see that. It carries me back years ago to my High-Church phase which used to annoy my father so much. I could have slipped out before the sermon, but the preacher seems to have his eye on me now. After all, this is a pleasant place. I like these clean white pillars, and the shaft of sun striking through the New Jerusalem in that window. “In memory of Elias Topping who departed this life on 1st August, 1934.” How different modern stained glass is from the Victorian stuff which kept all the light out. Thank God my feet are more comfortable now. I won’t economise in shoes again. This afternoon I must put on my old pair, even though they’re as crinkled as a nurse’s face. If I can’t afford good ones, I’ll wrap my feet in newspaper.

  And so, to-day, I am going to speak to you of prayer. The crudest form of prayer, and that with which, alas, you are probably most familiar, is the request for a material personal benefit. I know a young lady, who admitted that, when taking up her hand at bridge, she always prayed that God would give her four aces in it. And this, mark you, after the cards had been dealt. While we applaud this lady’s faith in the omnipotence of the Deity, who, if He was to grant her wish, must miraculously transform a two of hearts into, let us say, an ace of clubs and vice versa, we cannot help wishing that her faith had been enlightened by a more spiritual vision. But, you will say, there is no need to suppose that God had to perform such a vulgar conjuring trick as I describe. With His infinite foreknowledge, He knew of the young lady’s prayer before it was uttered, and, being disposed to grant it, so directed the fingers of the persons who shuffled and cut the cards, that the four aces fell into the required position. Do not think, please, that I have chosen this illustration, which may to some of you seem almost profane, merely in order to amuse you or gain your attention cheaply. It is a forcible illustration at the root of a big problem, and the prayer that one may find four aces in a hand already dealt, is only an extreme example of the private prayers which many of you have already uttered to yourselves this morning, in this Church. For what, then, you will ask me, shall we pray? And is it safe or possible to limit the objects of prayer?

  How full of lovely questions all this is. My feet are certainly hurting less. I wonder if society will ever become so harried by organisation that its greatest pleasure will be going quietly to Church? Or won’t one be safe even there? Will they instal a psycho-detector to see if one is thinking an anti-social or improper thought? And will the concentration-camp be waiting as one steps out of the main door past the font?

  Oh, I thank God for my momentary freedom—my freedom to leave now in the middle of this excellent parson’s period, if I want to, and slip down to the harbour and watch the good people of the port cluster round the Seven Anchors, enjoying this late April sunshine and the glass that cheers.

 
; Nothing for you this morning, old boy. You’re a remittance man now, thanks to Doctor Donald Rusper. You must go thirsty to lunch at King Stephen’s Hotel, and make your little go a long way.

  The sun flows through the New Jerusalem in the stained glass window erected in memory of Elias Topping. It flows like free whisky from a cask—a pure whisky that does nothing to the guts, the liver or the head. I was never born a type to be a drunkard. Rusper might know that. I value the essential me far too highly to let it be impaired by systematic toping. I happen to have attacks of imprudence. That’s all. Like old gentlemen with disordered glands who assault housemaids in the park. That’s why no “cure” would be any use for me. And I don’t want myself changed. They’d kill the complex that lays the golden eggs. (Somebody else said that, but it’s good.) The great advantage of living near a volcano is that one discovers such peculiar beauties on the edge. If I had ten thousand a year and a handsome wife, I couldn’t think life as lovely as I now do. This liberty to come and go—to slip in and out of the crowd, unknown and irresponsible—this liberty to merge my soul, and sometimes almost my physical body, into the material world which surrounds me—is so godlike that I should be insane to ask for anything more. That is why I cling to the past—like a fading rose-petal clinging to the stalk. Any change for me must be a change for the worse. Even “certainty of tenure,” to quote a phrase from Daly’s office where I used to work, might destroy these keen perceptions. But I shall win this battle against Rusper and his professional pomposity. Having twice his brain and fewer scruples—— Now we must all stand up. I should like to have gone out. My feet feel perfect. If I had ten thousand a year I should have gone out, and damned the collection. But as every shilling is important to me, I feel it would be mean to go without paying for my seat. Threepence will do. I have threepence, unbudgeted for, in my left trouser-pocket. How pleasantly the coins jingle as they fall into the bag.

  I shall remember the sunshine through the New Jerusalem. I shall come here again. “Excuse me, Madam.”

  Now for the steep hill leading down to the harbour. Twelve strikes from the church tower, and the clock bears the motto: Trifle not: thy time is short. My time is short. That is why I trifle. Or rather, I don’t trifle. I live. Those who don’t trifle, don’t live—in my sense of trifling and in my sense of living.

  No drink for you, old boy, this bright summer morning. Lance, the boatman, waves, all got up in his Sunday best. Let him go in with his pals. I won’t join them now. This seat will do for me. With any luck, that dirty old man sprawling at the other end will keep people away. The seat smells slightly of paint in the hot sunshine. The smells here alone are worth a week’s contemplation—the salt in the air and the stagnant salt of these molluscs on the ironwork, where only the highest tide reaches. Beyond this little basin the waters of the harbour swell lazily, and rub a scummy fringe on the seawall. What are the secrets of that slimy ridge? The boats move with the same motion—up and down, up and down—and the sails, too, flap rhythmically. I can smell salted rope. No, nobody’s ready for a sail to-day. It’s too early for the sailing season. Besides, we should still be up there, finishing up the service. I’d go for a sail, I think, if I had half a crown. No, I wouldn’t, I’d join Lance in the Seven Anchors.

  It would be a waste of time to fall asleep here—while I’ve still got a bed at night. Those few moments of slipping down into nothing aren’t worth the time I should lose. That nursemaid wasn’t told to bring her charge down here, I’ll bet. I wonder whom she’s after. One of those sailors, I suppose, who hang about and always look very well. I should have thought she’d prefer the band on the upper parade. It’ll be a job getting the pram up the hill. Oh, but she’ll have help. There comes the sailor. I suppose the baby is too young to talk. I wonder if this stores up a complex for it, when it sees them kissing or cuddling and can’t tell Mamma. If those dogs fight I shall pretend to be asleep. Otherwise I should get bitten and have to get Mrs. Temperley to bind me up and put on the iodine. I’m sure she has it in her medicine-chest. Already she’s given me quinine, cinnamon, vaseline, pills, glyco-thymoline and boracic ointment—in less than six weeks.

  I chose the King Stephen Hotel because it was called after me. And it gives me a little bedroom with morning sun at the top of the top flight of stairs, and three meals a day for thirty-eight shillings a week. A lucky choice. I hate none of my fellow-guests, and I adore Mrs. Temperley, who allows me not to see her when I would rather not. O admirable British matron—Kipling almost—economising at the King Stephen Hotel to keep her son at Harrow. How practical, unamorous and kind. I’ll stay on at the King Stephen till I die. Already, on this May morning, I find myself praying that I shall stroll round this harbour in the mist of a November afternoon. (The very prayer the parson was talking about—for a material personal benefit.) But that is my four aces in one hand. I must have them. I must see this harbour in a November mist, while boys throw squibs at the boatmen, and dodge behind the barrels on the quay. I must hear the water lapping under the mist, and all that creaking which will be louder for the silence of that afternoon. I must still be smelling these smells which, however, will be different, staler, and impregnated with the long clamminess of autumn. I must be here—six months ahead in November, when even this Sunday’s newspaper posters would cease to terrify.

  2

  Why do they have these posters down here by the harbour? Victory—defeat—bombardment—warning—crisis. For some months now, I’ve been living—at intervals only, thank God—twenty-one years ago, passing the dates of that period one by one and experiencing all their nastiness once more. And as I’ve formed the habit of casting my memory back, like a narrow searchlight, exactly twenty-one years, I’ve developed a superstition, that as each anniversary passes, as it comes of age, that precise horror at least can’t hurt me again. Unfortunately, there are still so many of them I shall have to live through. That day near Laventie when I was really a coward, and might have been shot, if anyone had noticed. My return from leave—next November. Trench fever, and dreary convalescence at the Base, March, April and part of May next year. My “Company Commander’s Course” at Monchy la Fontaine, which I hated with a strange venom, July next year. Then the Somme in October next year, and another go of trench fever. And still nine months of beastliness after that, with my wound in June the year after next, when the war will be over for me.

  The worst is still to come. No, not quite the worst. I’ve done my enlistment, and all those timid heroics of mine. I’ve done that hideous camp at Bramfort Moor. The bayonet-fighting instructor has given me his last lecture. I mean the instructor there; for the lectures we had when I was an officer were never quite so bad. I’ve seen the last of that odious Sergeant Cleame. Last January that was, about the fourteenth or fifteenth. And twenty-one years ago to-day, after breakfast, I “entrained”—how the words stick—for the front for the first time. It was a Tuesday—after a little burst of unsatisfying leave. They had told us that officers ought to have revolvers, but we hadn’t been shown how to fire them. The war was still amateurish in those days. It was only on Monday, the day before, I remember, when I went and bought mine. I really must learn how to fire it, I thought, and I pegged a sheet of newspaper on to a clothes-line between two apple-trees in the garden at Elmcroft, and fired desperately. I didn’t realise how dangerous it was. To have shot an inhabitant of South Mersley would have been a monstrous crime, even though we were in the middle of a war. Then my father shouted through the window that he had a patient with him. “All right,” I thought, “if I’m killed through not knowing how to shoot, it’ll be your fault.” But I was glad to stop practising. Then I went out alone for a walk on the common, and thought all kinds of beautiful things to myself. Dora was doing war-work most of the day, and there was no one else to go out with. Then dinner with the Boswells, and Pa Boswell’s heavy fun about it all. “Of course you’ll come back, my young fellow, as fit as a flea.” (But he
was to die very painfully before I came back, and two of his sons—though what is two out of five?—were not to come back at all.) The Ruspers were there, but not Donald, who was serving his country in Devonshire. But beware of bitterness about those who had an easy war. Didn’t they do what I hope to do next time? Besides, Don Rusper in Devonshire was probably a good deal more useful to King and Country than I was in Flanders.

  I awoke next morning, feeling slightly sick. The day had come. Breakfast, half-eaten, with father looking down his nose at me. He had a busy morning in prospect, and it was left to Dora to go with me as far as was allowed. I remember the click of the white gate at Elmcroft as it shut behind me. “Now I have really left home,” I thought. It was the same click as Dora’s mother must have heard the year before, when she was taken to hospital for the operation which killed her. The same click as my father was to hear, eleven years later, when he was taken to the nursing-home for his operation. Good-bye to Elmcroft—home, such as it was, and life, such as it was. The honeysuckle was early that year, and smelt very fragrant as it sprawled lazily over the wooden fence.